And upon a set day... — Josephus (Ant. xix. 8, § 2) gives an account of the incident that follows substantially agreeing with that here recorded. The scene was the theatre at Cæsarea, which had been built by Herod the Great. Agrippa was celebrating games in honour of the Emperor Claudius, who had succeeded Caligula in A.D. 41, possibly in honour of his return from Britain in A.D. 44. He was arrayed in a robe of silver tissue, such as Caligula had been wont to wear at banquets and games in Rome, which glittered with a dazzling brightness under the rays of the morning sun. His courtiers, taking up the Roman fashion of showing honour to kings and emperors, hailed him as a god, and prayed him, as such, to be propitious to them. The king did not repress the flattery, which fell on the ears of all Jewish by-standers as a fearful blasphemy. He accepted for himself the divine honours which he had dissuaded Caligula from claiming. He looked up, and saw an owl perched on a rope behind him, and recognised in it an omen of evil, fulfilling a prediction which had been made to him by a fellow-prisoner during his confinement at Rome (Jos. Ant. xviii. 8). Sharp pain fell on him, and in five days he died.
Comparing St. Luke’s narrative with this, it seems probable that the delegates from Tyre and Sidon were among those who raised the cry, “Be thou propitious to us,” and that their friend Blastus, knowing the weak point in Herod’s character, had instructed them that this was the way to obtain his favour. We feel, as we read the narrative, the contrast between St. Peter’s refusal even of Cornelius’s attitude of homage, and Agrippa’s acceptance of the profane apotheosis of the multitude.